This installment of the Harry Potter series is by far my favorite one. A few days ago I was randomly browsing GoodReads Listopia when I ran into it liThis installment of the Harry Potter series is by far my favorite one. A few days ago I was randomly browsing GoodReads Listopia when I ran into it listed under Best Time Travel Fiction. And although I remember Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban very well (it's been a few good years since I read it), I had to stop and think where did the time-travel came into play.

Of course I did remember, but in the process I realized that for me what is spectacular about this novel is not the time-travel aspect, but the realization of magic. In my opinion the instance in which Harry produces that larger-than-life Patronus Charm in order to save Sirius from the swarm of dementors is everything magic should be: awe-inspiring, formidable, all along being backed-up by true emotion. It is in fact probably the best magical act that I read in any book and I remember giving me goosebumps when I first read it.

And yes, the book does have quite a bit of time-travel (fitting very well in, what I call, the immovable history school-of-thought), but it is only a tool used to facilitate the plot, not the central theme of the novel. It is this that threw me off when finding it listed in the time-travel category: to me this is a pure fantasy novel (and a peculiar one, in that respect, since it mixes low-fantasy and high-fantasy in a coherent whole).

To end here, this is a great book for all those young at heart....more

Quick and dirty reading notes and (i)relevant thoughts✐ In an alternate steampunk reality, Seattle is ridden with zombies created inadvertently by tQuick and dirty reading notes and (i)relevant thoughts✐ In an alternate steampunk reality, Seattle is ridden with zombies created inadvertently by the release of a toxic gas. A sprinkling of people still leave underground, but most of the population migrated elsewhere. When the 15-year-old son of the man who caused the havoc runs back to Seattle, his mother has no choice but try to save him from a world where zombies are not the most dangerous creatures. And since a boy is a boy, he has to make every possible wrong decision, making his mother attempt's nearly futile.

✐ I have serious troubles trying to figure out who is the intended audience of this novel. The language is overly simplistic, very similar to a YA story, but the main character is 35 and "she did not look a minute younger," which is not your typical YA heroine. Also, the society is implicitly matriarchal, with older but wise women being in the center of everything that is accomplished. My best guess is that the novel was intended for the increasingly numerous adults (women, in this case) reading YA novels. (I admit occasionally I read them too, if not for the sometimes deficient language and limited depth, at least for their more optimistic feeling that unfortunately lacks in most adult novels. There is so much dread, destruction, and gore one can read without getting totally depressed.)

✐ This being said, Boneshaker is an action-driven novel, a page turner by all means. There are battles and chases and fights and traps and all of them are well narrated. In fact the book is a collection of them, with almost no respite. The alternate reality is interesting and quite believable: a mix of steampunk and the current state, with a lot of electricity involved.

✐ And yet I wish there was something more: introspection and a view into the local "politics." This is in fact the reason for the 4-star rating - Boneshaker is almost completely devoid of character development. The bad are bad and they exploit the good who are good. None of them seems to evolve throughout the story, with the notable exception of Briar becoming more open toward her son.

✐ I think this is a good story and the seemingly incongruous elements are made to fit well with each other. But I was hoping for a little bit more....more

Quick and dirty reading notes and (i)relevant thoughts(I read this novel a while ago, but I decided to go back and write a review, since is so littlQuick and dirty reading notes and (i)relevant thoughts(I read this novel a while ago, but I decided to go back and write a review, since is so little known. And what a pity that is. )

✐ This is a very different kind of science-fiction and I read that the author had trouble finding a publisher since most folks took it for fantasy. In fact Dreamsnake reads like a classic western, and it's only the brief details (mentions of genetic engineering, craters of atomic bombs, collapsed domes of alien spacecrafts, etc) that set this novel in a extremely-far post-apocalyptic future.

✐ The society presented ranges from the archaic tribal communities to a segregated super-developed city (the Center). In between these, there are the healers, leaving outside the Center but versed in genetic engineering. Over the last hundred of years, they altered the snakes such that, under catalytic drugs, the composition of their venom changes into useful drugs. Without the snakes, the healers are crippled and can do little for the sick. It is because of this that when the main character loses a very rare specimen, she finds herself at an impasse: return home in disgrace, or try to convince the Center to give her a new one.

✐ I read some reviews complaining that the novel has some scientifically obsolete facts. I disagree: the pure scientific details are so scarce, that I can hardly see how this book can ever become antiquated. I know little about DNA modification, but everything that is described in Dreamsnake seemed at least possible. Definitely much more scientifically attainable than the inescapable but 100% unfeasible faster-than-light travel that abounds in nearly every space-opera. Yet no one complains about FTL travel, even if the only possible way to accomplish it is to induce the space-time continuum itself to move faster than light and ride its wave, so to speak. Or no one complains when very recent novels mention having targets in the effective range of a laser ツ, or (my personal favorite) hitting a camouflaged target with a laser ツ ツ.

✐ But I digress. What I liked most about this book was that it has overall an upbeat vibe. In fact unlike most novels which start from a relative high point and progress toward a low one, Dreamsnake begins at the nadir and advances toward apex....more

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a story about uprooting, about the desperation of never finding one's "land," about the insecurity of never knowing wThe Yiddish Policemen's Union is a story about uprooting, about the desperation of never finding one's "land," about the insecurity of never knowing where one is going to be tomorrow. I'm not Jewish, but in my opinion this novel tells the millennia-old story of a people always forced to run, always prejudiced against, always oppressed. Because from Antiquity (going through the horrid Inquisition era) to World War II, these people never enjoyed a pause in the their flee. Do they even enjoy it now, during the twenty-first century?

But first things first, let's get over with the writing technique that everyone talks about. Simple test: do you like the following sentence? "The clock on the hospital wall hummed to itself, got antsy, kept snapping off pieces of the night with its minute hand." YES → lucky you; you're in for a great ride. NO/MAYBE → this novel is about 380 pages of akin sentences to the one above.

I read lots of comments from people who wondered what was the purpose of the plethora of Yiddish terms? Does Mr. Chabon try to create a language barrier and hence suggest the idea of isolation? It turns out, the language was in fact the spark that kindled the idea of this novel. Here is the story as told by the author himself in "Guidebook to a Land of Ghosts," an essay first published in 1997 (yes, ten years before the novel first saw the light).

In 1993 the author bought a book published in 1958, named Say It in Yiddish (by Uriel Weinreich and Beatrice Weinreich). It was an modern phrasal dictionary, which he calls "probably the saddest book that I own." The issue that gnaws at him is the futility of this phrase-guide, since by that time Israel already abandoned the Yiddish language. From there to brainstorming about possible needs for such a dictionary, there was only one step. (He puts forth two speculations but, for lack of space, I'll mention only the relevant one.)

"I can imagine a different Yisroel (Note: a post-war equivalent of Israel), the youngest nation on the North American continent, founded in the former Alaska territory during World War II as a resettlement zone for the Jews of Europe. (I once read that Franklin Roosevelt was briefly sold on such a plan.) [...] The resulting country is a cold, northern land of furs, paprika, samovars, and one long, glorious day of summer. It would be absurd to speak Hebrew, that tongue of spikenard and almonds, in such a place. (Nota bene: so he assumes that they would speak Yiddish instead)[...]

But grief haunts every mile of the places to which the Weinreichs beckon. [...] By taking us to Yisroel, the Weinreichs are, in effect, taking us home, to the 'old country.' To a Europe that might have been."

It is the old country that the author attempts to recreate in The Yiddish Policemen's Union, and he success admirably. Because this world is not just a scanty pencil sketch - it is a luscious Renaissance-style oil painting (you know, the ones that dwell in every minute detail). Mr. Chabon "paints" credible humans with their emotions and personal histories, which are part of a plausible community history, placed in a made-up but once again believable development, subject to the bigger geographic interaction. No element is left aside and no effort to improve on the novel's world is too small. The author could have chosen to tell the story of the old country from a historical perspective, with much less time-cost and subsequent creative effort. But, by molding a contemporary world, Michael Chabon appears to point out that the character's feelings of uprooting are in fact still a painful reality.

This is not a happy story, but neither is altogether a dejected one. The relentless bereavement of the people who have lost their land is an ever-present shadow. But so is the hope that one day they will find their land.------✁------------

P.S. At the end, the edition that I read (Harper Collins's ebook published in 2012) has a Glossary of Yiddish Terms, which unfortunately is nowhere before mentioned. Do yourself a favor and check to see whether your edition has one. You'll need it......more

I am totally in love with Louis's writing style, or better said, her voice. Because she does have a voice which is so rare nowadays: in the cacophonyI am totally in love with Louis's writing style, or better said, her voice. Because she does have a voice which is so rare nowadays: in the cacophony of writers, rarely one can recognize a unique voice, distinguishable from thousands others. And yet, I believe that's the case with her. Her pen brings words to life: if she talks about a character, I find myself inside that person's head; if she describes the environment, I'm there looking at mountains or wading barefoot through rivers. I believe her style's strongest point is the character development, although quite a few people seem to regard the introspection as a slowing in the rhythm of the story. I guess it's a personal preference: I'd rather read a few extra pages to understand the actor's behavior, than dive head-down into the story and without gulping for enough air to bring the tale to life. As I said in my review of The Curse of Chalion (link to review), I don't think anything in her stories is gratuitous.

However overall I found Paladin of Souls less captivating than The Curse of Chalion. It took me a while to realize what there seem to be the "problem" (not that it greatly affected my reading experience, as my one-day-start-to-end read proved it). Some folks complained that there isn't that much going on in the book; but I believe that's only a side effect since there are much more action numbers in Paladin of Souls than in the previous instalment. In my opinion, the novel would have done better with an extra negative character. In The Curse of Chalion we have the Chancellor dy Jiornal who plays the secondary villain next to the curse itself. But in the second novel, there is no one besides the mysterious demon-driver to bring more tension (and twists of fate) in the scene. Yes we still have a version of the positive character turned negative through a perverted quality (in The Curse of Chalion this is Roya Orico who, by being too lenient, tips the good-bad scale; here it's Lady Cattilara whose morbid love threatens the lives of all those around her). But as these characters always turn good in the end, their contribution to the angst is not the same as a true rogue.

On the other hand, I found the characters from Paladin of Souls more nuanced and multidimensional than those in The Curse of Chalion. Ista is not only torn apart by a catastrophical early life, but also between her resentment (and let's admit it, esoteric fear) of dealing with the Gods and her true divine calling. Her furtive and rather concisely described love affair is charming and much more convincing than that of Royina Iselle in The Curse of Chalion. Both male characters, Lord Arhys and Lord Illvin, although extraordinary in their military skills, are quite regular men, easily tempted by a hot-blooded beautiful woman and frighten by their portended bleak fates.

Finally, although the goods' presence is much more widespread in this second installment (the Bastard Good is a singular character), I found the pure metaphysical discourse shy away in front of the mystery with metaphysical vibe....more